I really like this forum, but one thing that annoys me is that some people clearly violate forum rules or just neglect general forum etiquette (like posting in the wrong forum, copying threads, derailing discussion, necromancing and not using the search function - opening a thread with a question that is answered literally in the next thread).
For example, in the past several people opened a new thread offering an item in the general discussion board. You closed this and said "re-open this in the trade section". I think you should DELETE this thread. They get increased attention by everyone reading this thread - and not just people who visit the trade subforum. This gives them an unfair advantage over people who obey the forum rules and post it in the correct subforum right from the start. People who violate forum rules should not have an advantage over other users! Just delete these threads (or move without leaving a shadow topic, if that's possible) such that they don't have an advantage anymore.
Similarly, people ask the same questions over and over, for example the "how does +x to elemental damage" work. I actually bookmarked the 3 threads because it's coming up every day, so I can quickly refer them to the existing discussions. Why is this better than to have a new thread? Well, at some point there was one of these new threads and it completely got derailed, almost ending up in a flamewar between the theorycrafters in this forum and a group of pseudo-elitists posting in weird language.
Last but not least, when a topic comes up (and that was actually the point that made me create this thread here) there are multiple people creating multiple threads at the same time. I'm not aware of this, but is there something about gaining reputation if you're the creator of a new thread? One person just tries to end an existing discussion that was started yesterday by creating a new one, copying posts and information over to his thread.
Don't get me wrong, you're doing a great job and I didn't overlook that a lot of troll posts were deleted recently (especially in the discussion about dupes). So please take this as constructive criticism - keep up the good work and it's nice that you're staying in the background. I'm admin in other forums and I know how much work it is, and I have a similar style of acting in the background, But I think that with regard to the points I mentioned, you could act a bit more actively because as soon as the forum (in particular the general forum) starts getting flooded with duplicate threads, the quality goes downhill. THANKS!
At your first point. Deleting it instead of locking can easily be done.
Second point. Any forum on a game like this is going to have duplicate topics, even if they have been answered . That;s okay. What you seem to have the problem with, was the last thing you said "Well, at some point there was one of these new threads and it completely got derailed, almost ending up in a flamewar between the theorycrafters in this forum and a group of pseudo-elitists posting in weird language." In that case, simply reporting the posters who are derailing it can solve the issue (and we usually try to do that, but with the vast amount of topics, one can easily be missed), but we want to make sure people can start a new topic if they so wish. A lot of people also don't know its okay to necro a topic as long as they are still on topic, so they feel better by making a new topic.
As for people splitting conversations , that happens on any forum there is, people want to split out of the main thread, and start a new one based on their thoughts. You say it his happens "right away"? but that does not happen that often (that I can see) it usually happens after someone provides a key point that gets overlooked in the thread, and they feel they want to discuss it, so they make a new thread.
However there are other times, were a bunch of people make the same topic at the same time as it's new info...or what have you, in those case (if it is 100% the same topic) we just merge it. This is also a time where you can just report the thread, and we would be happy to look and see. It could be something we missed.
First of all: thank you for your answer Molster, and also thanks to the other moderators (Overneathe and co.) for their recent action - I was very happy with how was being dealt with similar cases in the past few days. Furthermore, I have to admit that I kind of overlooked/forgot about the potential usefulness of that small "report" button below each post.
I have some more questions/suggestions, but didn't want to open a new thread for this:
There were a couple of people in the past 2 days who bumped a bunch of threads to get to 10 posts, just to post a link/picture/video. You reacted to all of them and deleted them quickly - however, it was annoying. Couldn't you implement a function that would give every 1st time poster a 1 minute delay between 1st and 2nd post? It would probably stop some of the spammers and give you some time to react to them before they can bump up 10 threads and make the "recent posts" box on the front page useless.
Also, about said "recent post" box, could you increase the cookie timer (seems like right now it's only a few hours)? Even better would be if it's not a cookie, but an account setting - then it wouldn't get lost if I switch PCs.
I was also thinking of building my own personalized "recent posts" Chrome extension, because I only have 3 forums that I "watch", but if there are more than 6 new posts then I have to go through each of them individually. Would be great if the box could be flexible and one could expand it to show more recent posts. Well, this probably goes too far... just saying ;-)
For example, in the past several people opened a new thread offering an item in the general discussion board. You closed this and said "re-open this in the trade section". I think you should DELETE this thread. They get increased attention by everyone reading this thread - and not just people who visit the trade subforum. This gives them an unfair advantage over people who obey the forum rules and post it in the correct subforum right from the start. People who violate forum rules should not have an advantage over other users! Just delete these threads (or move without leaving a shadow topic, if that's possible) such that they don't have an advantage anymore.
Similarly, people ask the same questions over and over, for example the "how does +x to elemental damage" work. I actually bookmarked the 3 threads because it's coming up every day, so I can quickly refer them to the existing discussions. Why is this better than to have a new thread? Well, at some point there was one of these new threads and it completely got derailed, almost ending up in a flamewar between the theorycrafters in this forum and a group of pseudo-elitists posting in weird language.
Last but not least, when a topic comes up (and that was actually the point that made me create this thread here) there are multiple people creating multiple threads at the same time. I'm not aware of this, but is there something about gaining reputation if you're the creator of a new thread? One person just tries to end an existing discussion that was started yesterday by creating a new one, copying posts and information over to his thread.
Don't get me wrong, you're doing a great job and I didn't overlook that a lot of troll posts were deleted recently (especially in the discussion about dupes). So please take this as constructive criticism - keep up the good work and it's nice that you're staying in the background. I'm admin in other forums and I know how much work it is, and I have a similar style of acting in the background, But I think that with regard to the points I mentioned, you could act a bit more actively because as soon as the forum (in particular the general forum) starts getting flooded with duplicate threads, the quality goes downhill. THANKS!
Second point. Any forum on a game like this is going to have duplicate topics, even if they have been answered . That;s okay. What you seem to have the problem with, was the last thing you said "Well, at some point there was one of these new threads and it completely got derailed, almost ending up in a flamewar between the theorycrafters in this forum and a group of pseudo-elitists posting in weird language." In that case, simply reporting the posters who are derailing it can solve the issue (and we usually try to do that, but with the vast amount of topics, one can easily be missed), but we want to make sure people can start a new topic if they so wish. A lot of people also don't know its okay to necro a topic as long as they are still on topic, so they feel better by making a new topic.
As for people splitting conversations , that happens on any forum there is, people want to split out of the main thread, and start a new one based on their thoughts. You say it his happens "right away"? but that does not happen that often (that I can see) it usually happens after someone provides a key point that gets overlooked in the thread, and they feel they want to discuss it, so they make a new thread.
However there are other times, were a bunch of people make the same topic at the same time as it's new info...or what have you, in those case (if it is 100% the same topic) we just merge it. This is also a time where you can just report the thread, and we would be happy to look and see. It could be something we missed.
I have some more questions/suggestions, but didn't want to open a new thread for this:
There were a couple of people in the past 2 days who bumped a bunch of threads to get to 10 posts, just to post a link/picture/video. You reacted to all of them and deleted them quickly - however, it was annoying. Couldn't you implement a function that would give every 1st time poster a 1 minute delay between 1st and 2nd post? It would probably stop some of the spammers and give you some time to react to them before they can bump up 10 threads and make the "recent posts" box on the front page useless.
Also, about said "recent post" box, could you increase the cookie timer (seems like right now it's only a few hours)? Even better would be if it's not a cookie, but an account setting - then it wouldn't get lost if I switch PCs.
I was also thinking of building my own personalized "recent posts" Chrome extension, because I only have 3 forums that I "watch", but if there are more than 6 new posts then I have to go through each of them individually. Would be great if the box could be flexible and one could expand it to show more recent posts. Well, this probably goes too far... just saying ;-)